The South Carolina Court of Appeals dismissed a tax appeal because money placed in counsel’s IOLTA account and a personal surety did not satisfy the statutory pre-appeal payment or bond requirement.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals revived a constructive-trust theory based on an alleged promise not to use a testamentary power of appointment to alter a family company’s voting control.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals upheld lottery-winner privacy protections, signature redactions, and relief from FOIA requests requiring millions of dollars and thousands of staff hours.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the Administrative Law Court’s property tax ruling, holding that the “current fair market value” floor for the ATI exemption is the pre-sale value on the assessor’s books—not that value inflated by improvements the prior owner completed before the sale closed. Because the improvements were already incorporated into the ATI fair market value of $8,034,000 used to compute the exemption value, the Assessor’s approach of re-adding them to the current fair market value floor impermissibly double-counted them. The taxable value for tax year 2022 was $6,063,000, not $6,821,000.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed and remanded Kendrick Lee’s ABHAN conviction and life-without-parole sentence, holding that the trial court erred by excusing the only Black prospective juror based on a hearing impairment without first conducting an individualized inquiry into whether reasonable accommodations could have enabled that juror to render efficient service, as required by the ADA and S.C. Code Ann. § 14-7-1020.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed Brian Redding’s murder conviction, holding the circuit court erred in denying his directed verdict motion because the State’s wholly circumstantial case—comprising a difficult relationship, theoretical access to the murder weapon, a clothing change, and trace gunshot-residue on shorts—raised only a suspicion of guilt rather than substantial circumstantial evidence, particularly in light of Redding’s corroborated alibi and innocent explanations for each item of State’s evidence.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals held that a criminal defendant wearing a private bond company’s GPS ankle monitor retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in that location data under the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution, requiring a warrant; though the trial court erred in admitting the warrantlessly obtained GPS data, the error was harmless given the victim’s in-court identification, the stolen moped evidence, and the victim’s debit card found on the defendant at arrest.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals dismissed a pretrial detainee’s appeal of a circuit court order releasing his jail telephone calls to the media, holding the order was non-appealable as interlocutory, and reaffirming that South Carolina requires evidence of actual juror bias rather than presumed prejudice from pretrial publicity.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the Administrative Law Court’s approval of combined unitary reporting (CUR) as the Department of Revenue’s alternative apportionment method for Tractor Supply Company’s 2014–2016 tax years, holding that artificially inflated intercompany transfer pricing that shifted income to a non-filing affiliate distorted the standard sales factor formula, and that CUR is an authorized and reasonable remedy under § 12-6-2320(A) and Media General.
The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed a murder conviction, holding that the defendant’s decision to return to the confrontation site while armed — minutes after texting “I’m gonna kill that BBoy” — defeated Stand Your Ground immunity under the Protection of Persons and Property Act; suicide attempt evidence was properly admitted under the Cartwright framework; and the self-defense jury charge adequately covered the law.